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DiscussionMedical Consent
I was going through some training last week on consent in a medical context. One session was dedicated specifically to autistic patients. (I am autistic myself so this was of particular interest to me.)
A point that kept coming up was that many autistic people struggle to imagine possible long term consequences of decisions, especially those made under pressure or during a period of ill health. The examples given were types of cancer treatment and the difficulty that we may experience weighing up the cost/benefits of different treatments that may not present immediately. In fact, infertility was specifically mentioned as something that should be considered far more deeply with autistic patients.
So why does all of this fly out the window when it comes to gender-related treatments? If trans healthcare is just like all other healthcare, why are we suddenly told to ignore the extremely common symptom of autism which is an impaired ability to fully imagine long-term consequences of treatment, especially whilst distressed?